RoboBraille Eases Web Use

The site now processes 400 requests a day A free service that provides automatic Braille conversion is proving popular despite still being in test phase.

RoboBraille was started by a Danish organisation and now has partners in five other European countries. Anyone wanting to use the service, which is partly funded by the EU, can send plain text, rich text, html or Word documents by e-mail. Within a few minutes they receive their document either as an MP3 audio file or as electronic Braille. Electronic Braille can be read by a tactile display - a device connected to the computer with a series of pins that are raised or lowered to represent the Braille characters - or sent to a Braille printer.

“About two or three years ago we came to the conclusion that it’s simply too complicated for the average user to produce Braille,” consortium leader, Lars Balieu Christensen told the BBC News website. ”You need to know far too much about Braille conversion, Braille characters and layout.”

Mr Christensen - who also runs a Danish assistive technology company - said that he and a colleague decided that the process needed to be made far simpler. “We wanted to set up a system that was entirely automated, where the user didn’t need to know anything apart from an e-mail address.”

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